What Should I Do With Old Branded Uniform?
By The Velocity Wear Team
Take the branding off or destroy it, then recycle the textile rather than binning it. Branded uniform that leaves your organisation intact can be worn by anyone, and a logo is a surprisingly effective way to be trusted on a doorstep or waved through a gate. Removing the branding first is the step most disposal plans skip.
Why Intact Branded Kit Is a Problem
A uniform is a signal, and signals can be borrowed. Someone wearing your polo at a customer's front door, your hi-vis on a site, or your fleece in a reception area gets a level of assumed access that no ID badge process is really designed to counteract. This is not a theoretical worry for organisations that visit homes, work on secure sites or handle deliveries. It applies just as much to garments that were donated in good faith, because a charity shop cannot know that the logo on the chest is no longer authorised. Treat retired uniform as a controlled item until the branding is gone.
How to Actually Remove a Logo
The method depends on how the branding was applied, and some options are much less effective than they look. Embroidery is the awkward one. Unpicking stitches leaves needle holes in the exact shape of your logo, and the result is still recognisable at a glance. Cutting the branded panel out of the garment is blunt but honest, and it is what most organisations end up doing. Printed logos can be defaced, but a marker pen over a print is not removal, it is a smudge that still reads from a distance. Heat-applied vinyl sometimes lifts with heat, though it usually leaves a visible ghost.
- Cut the branded panel out of the garment: crude, immediate, and impossible to reverse, which is the point.
- Cut through the logo itself with scissors in two or three directions, if the whole garment is going to a rag or fibre route anyway.
- Overprint or overstitch with a solid block, which suits garments being kept for internal use such as decorating or workshop kit.
- Do not rely on marker pen, tape or turning a garment inside out as a permanent solution, because none of them survive a wash or a second glance.
- Never donate, resell or hand back branded kit with the logo intact, even to staff who are leaving on good terms.
Recycling Routes That Will Actually Take Workwear
Once the branding is dealt with, the textile itself has more options than the bin. Cotton-rich garments in reasonable condition feed the industrial wiper and rag market. Mixed and worn textiles can go to fibre recovery, where they are shredded for insulation and filling. Some garment suppliers and larger textile recyclers run take-back schemes for bulk workwear, which is worth asking about at the point you place a large order rather than at the point you are throwing it away. Council textile banks handle household volumes, not a pallet of retired polos, so a commercial route is usually the right one for anything at scale.
“"A retired polo with your logo still on it is not rubbish. It is a set of keys."”
The Items That Need More Care
Some categories deserve stricter handling. High-visibility garments lose their performance long before they look worn out, and reflective tape and fluorescent fabric are difficult for standard recycling streams, so check what your recycler accepts. Anything associated with security, access control or a regulated activity should be destroyed rather than passed on. Contaminated garments from food, medical or chemical environments have their own disposal requirements. For all of these, follow current official guidance from GOV.UK and your waste contractor rather than a rule of thumb, because the requirements vary by material and by sector.
Keep a Simple Record
A one-line log of what was collected, when, how the branding was destroyed and where the textile went takes almost no effort and answers two questions later. It shows you can account for retired kit if anyone ever asks, and it gives you real numbers on how long garments actually last, which improves your next order more than any supplier conversation will. If you make environmental claims about what you do with old uniform, keep the evidence and keep the wording accurate, since the CMA publishes guidance on green claims and vague statements are the ones that cause trouble.
Buy the Next Set So It Outlives the Logo
The disposal problem is partly created at the purchasing stage. If your branding changes often, or you run several sub-brands, consider removable badges on hook-and-loop patches for outer layers, so the garment survives a rebrand that the logo does not. Choosing durable garments matters too, because the greenest uniform is the one that does not need replacing. And ordering a sensible quantity rather than an optimistic one avoids the specific waste of unworn stock in sizes nobody needed, which is the hardest kind to justify recycling.